December 2014

A decade ago, one of the deadliest natural disasters in history killed more than 230,000 people in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean and caused significant damage in five more. The magnitude 9.1–9.3 megathrust earthquake occurred 250 km south-south-east of Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Openness is trending high in the insurance industry lately and demands for efficiency, transparency, and flexibility are increasing. More tools and solutions that are either open source, open platform, or open standard are becoming available as a result.

In 2014, tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic was almost diametrically opposed to activity in the East and Central Pacific basins. Florida's record-setting hurricane "drought" stretched into its ninth year, while the East and Central Pacific basins had the second most active season since 1949.

I'm pleased to report there have been positive efforts by Congress to advance the reauthorization of TRIA since my previous post. Last week, House lawmakers passed a TRIA extension bill with a strong bipartisan vote, 417-7.

One of the biggest news stories in the U.S. over the last few months has been the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As a result, in part, of the sheer volume of news coverage, it has been of great concern to the U.S. populace.

According to security reporter and blogger Brian Krebs, the Home Depot hack—resulting in the compromise of more than 50 million credit and debit card numbers—may have affected most of its store locations.

At one time or another, fleeing toads, magnetic waves, thermal radiation, planetary alignments, tidal forces and disruptions in the ionosphere have all been said to foretell earthquakes. Ask most geoscientists to predict an earthquake, however, and they will scoff at the notion.

AIR’s historical U.S. hurricane catalog, which covers events starting in 1900, provides a robust view of landfalling and bypassing hurricanes. From this catalog, we can discern some interesting signals with respect to losses when historical events are simulated using current day exposures, notably the proportion of losses due to wind versus losses due to storm surge.